the long-threatened operation of "bleeding her white," when he discovered that England and Russia would support France and that his finances were less prepared than his Army. So again he drew back on the very brink of hostilities. Next year he demanded of every German a five per cent contribution — a “patriotic sacrifice"-for the benefit of the Army.

These specimen acts, told in sequence, and filled out, as they might be, by many symptomatic details, with the addition of other evidence not even referred to here, lay bare the speciousness of the Kaiser's claim to be reckoned among the peacemakers. He aspired to inherit the earth, but he was too good a Prussian to suppose he could come into that inheritance by peace instead of by war. And when put to the direct test of reducing the number of dreadnoughts to be built according to his naval program, or cutting down his Army, or entering into a conference on general disarmament, he flatly refused, and his mouthpieces in the press ridiculed these suggestions as childish.

D

CHAPTER VII

KULTUR

When 't is God's will to bring an utter doom
Upon a house, He first in mortal men

Implants what works it out.

ESCHYLUS. Fragment 151.

URING Germany's long political and

military preparation for world-supremacy, a propaganda for putting the minds and consciences of the German people into harmony with the Kaiser's ambition went on not less effectively, although it appeared to be less systematically organized.

Insatiate ambition, like jealousy, is a passion which gets confirmation and fresh fuel wherever it looks. In all directions the Germans saw proofs that they were the Chosen People. They interpreted the doctrine of evolution so as to draw from it a warrant for their aspirations. Evolution taught that "the fittest survived." Never was a word more decep

tive than that word "fittest." When we apply it to human concerns, which is fittest? Man and the fly are widely diffused over the earth; does that imply parity between them? A thug can murder the wisest philosopher or noblest statesman; the thug survives; does that mean that he is "fitter" than his victim? The Germans believed that the first element in fitness to survive is superior brute force. By that, their ancestors had conquered decaying Rome; by that, the Manchus made themselves masters of China; by that, the Spaniards overthrew the more highly civilized Saracens. To assemble the greatest possible volume of brute force, in their Army, Navy, fortifications, and equipment, was therefore their task.

A people which persuades itself that it is not only superior but fittest, acquires inevitably a supercilious attitude towards the rest of mankind; and during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the Germans were being infected by this idea, the other Great

Powers of Europe, and the United States also, accepted the doctrine that fate intended the Inferior Races to be the chattels of the Superior Races. To seize the lands of the black, brown, or yellow men who could not defend themselves, to exploit the natural resources of their lands, and to treat the black, brown, or yellow men as part of those resources, or even as a species of the fauna to be hunted and exterminated at will, was the cheerful, orthodox creed of the Superior Races. Material progress, which consisted in accumulating wealth at a speed hitherto unprecedented, was the standard which governed the Superior Races.

There is a venerable book which declares that God created man in his own image: this Book makes no mention of the color of God's creatures. But in our time white men have assumed that they alone are made in God's image and complexion, and that while they may be endowed with a soul, yellow and black and brown men are as soulless as the beasts

of the field. The denial of human solidarity opens the door to hideous abuses.

The Germans laid to heart this fatalistic gospel of Superior and Inferior. With proper logic they argued that, since color was only an accident, the Superior Race had no more obligations towards an Inferior Race which happened to be white than towards a black or a yellow; and the evidences which satisfied them of their superiority, convinced them also of the inferiority of their white neighbors! By the German gauge, the Latins- Spanish, French, and Italians—were manifestly decadent. The Slavs, led by Russia, had never risen to civilization, but threatened to inundate Central and Western Europe. England, they had to admit, had been both a strong and a valiant nation; but she was weary now, with the weariness of old age, which deterred her from keeping up with modern methods, and she had become so enervated by wealth that she trusted in the gold of the sovereign, rather than in the steel of the sword. To